The present invention relates to a microorganism manipulating apparatus and to a microorganism manipulating method for acquiring and/or moving microorganisms, such as germs or animal/plant cells.
In various tests and analyses employed in the biochemistry field, there is performed an operation that a specific microorganism is identified, acquired and separated among microorganisms, such as germs or animal/plant cells, which are present in a sample. Recently, laser tweezers have been employed to acquire individual microorganisms. To do this, the laser tweezers emit and condense a laser beam directed toward a microorganism in a sample solution, and form an optical trap by which the microorganism is acquired. In the laser tweezers, there are such many merits that a microorganism can be acquired without contact and without damage, and that a microorganism which has been acquired by performing a scanning operation using the laser beam can be moved to an arbitrary location in a sample.
An object to be acquired or to be picked from others is not always simply an individual microorganism, and a plurality of microorganisms may be handled simultaneously. In such a case, if the above described laser tweezers are employed, a plural sets of the laser tweezers apparatuses are required to acquire the microorganisms. However, since the laser tweezers apparatus is constituted by delicate and expensive optical devices, such as a laser radiation device and a laser beam scanning device, if such optical devices were provided in proportion to the number of objects to be operated, the cost would be very high. Therefore, conventionally, manipulating apparatuses or the like have been put to practical use, in which only a plurality of laser beam scanning devices and optical systems are provided and a laser radiation device is used in common by splitting a laser beam so as to reduce cost. However, even then the cost is high, and further cost reduction is presently required.
It is, therefore, one objective of the present invention to provide at a low cost a microorganism manipulating apparatus in which a plurality of microorganisms can be simultaneously acquired with an optical trap, and a microorganism manipulating method therefor.
To achieve the above objective, a microorganism manipulating apparatus according to the present invention comprises:
optical trapping means, in which single laser beam radiation means emits a laser beam, an optical system concentrates the laser beam, and single laser beam scanning means uses the concentrated laser beam to scan a microorganism so as to emit the laser bean to the microorganism and to acquire the microorganism; and multi-trap control means for controlling the optical trapping means to simultaneously acquire a plurality of microorganisms in a time-sharing manner.
According to the present invention, a microorganism manipulating apparatus may include laser output control means for controlling the output of the laser beam radiation means, and the laser output control means may be controlled by the multi-trap control means to change the output of a laser at the time of acquisition and of non-acquisition of the microorganism to be manipulated.
According to the present invention, provided is a microorganism manipulating method in which multi-trap control means controls optical trap means, in which single laser beam radiation means emits a laser beam, an optical system concentrates the laser beam, and single laser beam scanning means uses the concentrated laser beam to scan a microorganism to be manipulated so as to emit the laser beam to the microorganism and to acquire the microorganism, and thus, a plurality of microorganisms are simultaneously acquired in a time-sharing manner.
According to the microorganism operation method of the present invention, the output of a laser for the laser beam radiation means may be changed at the time of acquisition and at the time of non-acquisition of the microorganism to be manipulated.
According to the present invention, since single optical trap means is employed to simultaneously acquire a plurality of microorganisms in a time-sharing manner, inexpensive equipment can be used to perform an efficient microorganism operation.